Booker Prize winner Banu Mushtaq transcends her regional roots

When Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp became the first Kannada work—and the first short story collection—to win the 2025 International Booker Prize, it marked more than a literary milestone.

- BY JENNY FARRELL

It represented a long-overdue recognition of India’s regional literatures and, more crucially, brought global attention to the silenced voices of Muslim women in Karnataka’s rural heartlands. Mushtaq’s winning collection, sensitively translated by Deepa Bhasthi—whose work preserves the linguistic texture and cultural specificity of the original—is a radical act of witnessing: twelve stories spanning three decades expose systemic oppression while offering Muslim women both a mirror to recognize their struggles and a voice to articulate their resistance.

Banu Mushtaq is a formidable voice in Karnataka’s Bandaya Sahitya (Rebel Literature) movement, rooted in anti-caste, feminist, and secular traditions. Mushtaq’s work challenges existing hierarchies by centring the struggles of Muslim women. In her home region, Karnataka, where Dalit-Muslim solidarity is strong, she is known for her unflinching critiques of triple talaq (a now-banned form of instant divorce which left women destitute) and hijab bans (policies barring headscarves, limiting Muslim girls’ access to education). Her essays and speeches, published in radical Kannada journals like Lankesh Patrike and Sahitya Sangama, expose how Hindutva dominance and conservative Muslim patriarchy collude to suppress women’s autonomy.

Mushtaq uniquely bridges Ban-daya’s class-caste revolt with Islamic feminism. She confronts both Hindu supremacist violence—such as hijab bans—and regressive elements within Muslim communities, from patriarchal control to caste-based discrimination among believers. By organizing with Dalit Bahujan literary groups and Muslim women’s collectives, she has expanded the Rebel Literature movement to confront Islamophobia while demanding accountability from within—making her an important figure in Karnataka’s cultural resistance.